JFI ad hoc Seminar
Faculty of Exact Sciences
Tel Aviv University
Sedimentation of irregular objects
Sedimentation, the settling of colloidal objects under gravity, involves long-ranged flow-mediated interactions among the objects. Consequently, sedimenting suspensions exhibit a complex many-body dynamics with strong fluctuations, even in the case of athermal (non-Brownian) objects at zero Reynolds number. We study the sedimentation of self-aligning objects. These are asymmetric colloidal objects, which, as they are settling, tend to align a specific eigen-direction affixed to them with gravity. By employing a fluctuating hydrodynamic model, we find that hydrodynamic interactions regulate concentration fluctuations in such suspensions, leading to a finite variance of the sedimenting velocity. We show that the nature of this behavior differs qualitatively from hydrodynamic screening mechanisms that were suggested in the case of symmetric objects, for which the details of sedimentation are still under debate.
Friday, 8 July, 2016 12:15 pm
Gordon Center for Integrative Science, room E123
Discussion begins at noon; bring a lunch.
For updates to this poster, see
http://jfi.uchicago.edu/~tten/VisitorPoster1.html
If you need assistance, please contact Kathleen Conroy, conroy@uchicago.edu 773 702-7184.
host: T. Witten, t-witten@uchicago.edu